The browser line on the cost review was billed in a unit nobody on the team used day to day. The platform engineer turned it into hours on a whiteboard while the CTO asked what the same fleet would cost somewhere else. By the end of the meeting there was a ticket on the board: compare the options before the renewal.
Kernel runs cloud headless browser sessions for agents with stealth mode, managed auth and replays, and teams look past it when cost, speed or code execution comes up. The strongest alternatives are Solari, Browserbase, Steel, Hyperbrowser and Anchor Browser, and Solari leads because it starts sessions faster and runs browsers, sandboxes and desktops from one account. This guide covers why teams look past Kernel, then what each alternative costs and where it fits.
Reasons to Consider an Alternative to Kernel
The search for a second vendor usually starts with a specific event, so the events come first. Kernel says its Free plan is $0 plus usage with $5 in monthly credits, Hobbyist is $30 a month with 10 concurrent browsers, and Start-Up is $200 a month with 150 concurrent browsers, on Kernel's pricing page. Usage bills at $0.0000166667 per GB-second, with no charges for idle time or proxies, on the same Kernel page.
Three events tend to follow. A cost review asks for an hourly figure, and a GB-second rate needs an assumption about memory before it can sit next to other vendors' hourly rates. A concurrency step lands between plans, since moving from the Hobbyist cap to the Start-Up cap also moves the monthly fee. Or the agent starts writing code, and the team wants a machine for it on the same bill as its browsers.
Each alternative answers those events differently, and the table below sorts them before the details.
The Five Alternatives at a Glance
The table gives each vendor's niche in a few words; the sections after it put numbers on each one.
Solari comes first because it answers all three events from the same account.
1. Solari
Solari is the environment an agent runs in: the customer brings the model and the logic, and Solari supplies the machine.
Core capabilities. A Solari cloud browser is a Chromium session started by API and driven over CDP or Playwright, with stealth and proxy settings chosen per session. Solari profiles save a login, its cookies and site data in Playwright's storageState format. An agent signs in once, and every later session reopens the same cookies.
Speed. On Steel's open-source benchmark, across 5,000 runs with Solari's results in a pull request that is still open, Solari averaged 199.9 ms end to end. That is about 4x faster than Kernel, about 4.5x faster than Steel, about 14.8x faster than Browserbase and about 40x faster than Anchor on the same benchmark repo. An agent that opens a fresh browser per task gains that margin on every task.
Beyond browsers. The same account opens Solari sandboxes for agent-generated code, with pause, resume, snapshot and fork. Solari desktops are Linux computers with a screen for computer-use models, and each starts usually in about a second. An agent that browses, runs code and checks a desktop app stays on one API key and one bill.
Pricing and plans. Solari's Free plan has no monthly fee and comes with $3 in monthly credits, and the Professional plan is $200 a month with browsers at $0.07 per hour and 150 concurrent browsers. Credits refill each month and there is no end-of-month overage charge. Solari is about 2x cheaper per browser hour than Browserbase and about 1.6x cheaper than Steel at list price.
Who it's best for. Teams whose agents need fast sessions, saved logins and a place to run code from the same account. Solari browsers are driven over CDP or Playwright, the interfaces most browser agents already use, so a side-by-side trial can run on a real workload.
2. Browserbase
Browserbase is the incumbent of the category, and its plans bundle more than browsers.
Pricing and plans. Browserbase says its Developer plan is $20 a month with 100 browser hours, then $0.12 per browser hour, on Browserbase's pricing page. Its Startup plan is $99 a month with 500 browser hours on the same Browserbase page. A team that stays inside the included hours pays a flat fee, and overage is where the bill grows.
Where it shines. Browserbase includes search and fetch calls beside its browsers on every plan, starting at 1,000 search calls a month, per Browserbase's plans. An agent that searches the web and reads pages does both through one vendor.
Trade-off. The Free plan caps sessions at 15 minutes and leaves out CAPTCHA solving, per Browserbase's pricing page. Teams that run long or protected sessions start on a paid plan from the first day.
3. Steel
Steel comes from open source, and that shapes who picks it.
Pricing and plans. Steel says its Launch plan has no monthly fee, only usage plus a one-time credit, at $0.10 per browser hour with sessions up to 15 minutes, on Steel's pricing page. Scale is $250 a month plus usage at $0.08 per browser hour, with 100 concurrent sessions and sessions up to 1 hour, on the same Steel page. Longer jobs move to Enterprise, where Steel says sessions run up to 24 hours.
Where it shines. Steel says Steel Browser is open source and can be self-hosted, on Steel's pricing page. A team that wants the same browser on its own machines has that option.
Trade-off. The Launch plan has no stealth browser, which Steel includes on Enterprise, per Steel's plans. Teams working on sites that block automation should price the Enterprise contract early.
4. Hyperbrowser
Hyperbrowser sells browsers as one line on a broader rate card.
Pricing and plans. Hyperbrowser says its Startup plan is $30 a month with the same amount of usage included and 25 concurrent sessions, on Hyperbrowser's pricing page. Browsers bill at $0.10 per hour, and sandboxes at $0.045 per vCPU-hour plus $0.015 per GiB-hour, on the same Hyperbrowser page. Plan credits reset at renewal and do not roll over, so a quiet month does not bank usage for a busy one.
Where it shines. Hyperbrowser offers browsers, sandboxes, web data APIs and agents under one account, per Hyperbrowser's pricing page. A team that wants scraping endpoints beside its browsers keeps them with one vendor.
Trade-off. Automatic CAPTCHA solving and basic stealth start at Startup, and ultra stealth mode is Enterprise only, per Hyperbrowser's plans. Agents on heavily protected sites should budget for the top tier.
5. Anchor Browser
Anchor Browser prices by completed task rather than by browser hour.
Pricing and plans. Anchor says its Starter plan is $50 a month with 50 credits and up to 25 concurrent browsers, and every plan charges 0.1 credits per completed task with overage at $1.00 per credit, on Anchor's pricing. Its Growth plan is $2,000 a month on the same Anchor page. The page does not define a credit further, so a cost estimate needs a test run to see how tasks map to credits.
Where it shines. Authenticated (logged-in) browsers and automated CAPTCHA bypass start at Starter, and Growth adds SOC2 Type 2, ISO 27001 and GDPR, per Anchor's plans. Enterprise offers bring-your-own-cloud or on-premise deployment for teams with strict data rules.
Trade-off. Task pricing reads simply but is hard to compare with hourly rates, because a long task and a short one draw the same credits. That makes a short trial on real tasks the quickest way to set Anchor's bill beside an hourly one.
Choosing the Right Setup
The choice comes down to how the bill is counted, how fast sessions start and what the agent needs beside a browser. Choose Browserbase for search beside browsers, Steel to self-host, Hyperbrowser for web data APIs and Anchor Browser for task-priced, logged-in agents. Choose Solari when session speed and the browser-hour rate decide the budget, or when the agent also runs code or uses a desktop. Kernel is the more established vendor with the larger ecosystem; Solari is the younger company and moves faster on speed and price.
Get Started With Solari
The first step is to point a Kernel workload at a Solari browser, attach a profile, and run the same task on both side by side. Against Kernel and the other vendors compared here, Solari is the fastest and cheapest choice for browser agents, backed by the speed and browser-hour multiples in the Solari section, and it is free to start: create a Solari account and read how Solari started.
